BP Oil Spill - Pictures of the Gulf Coast Disaster

  As a photojournalist I learn something new from each and every project I do.  Sometimes I come away from story with profound new facts and information that I never could have discovered had I not just gone and experienced it myself.  Sometimes what I learn is life changing, knowledge that opens my eyes and allows me to see the world and humanity in a completely new light.  Other times I feel like I learn very little and in some cases I feel like I know less about a situation than I thought I did going into it. This was my experience shooting the aftermath of the one of the worst oil spills in history, the BP Gulf Oil Spill.

  Going into the project I pictured angry fishermen protesting on the streets and fighting for their livelihood that had been passed down from generation to generation.  I pictured oil drenched beaches with dead animals strewn about and thick sludge as far as the eye could see.  I pictured conversations with scientists and wildlife officials that would open my eyes to new facts and information.  But what I actually found when I arrived was, for the most part, quite different.

  I knew from the research I did that Louisiana would be the best place to document from.  What I did not know was that the two areas that were primarily affected, the Venice are and the Grand Isle area, were quite far apart from each other.  While you could actually make it from one place to the other by boat in about thirty minutes, the drive between the two was around ten hours round trip.  It became even more complicated since all of the hotels and guest houses in each area were booked for months in advance by contractors and government agencies who came to respond to the disaster and of course take in some of the money that usually flows freely in such situations.  I found one apartment for rent and the man was asking $2,100 a week, which is a situation you often find when all of a sudden media and organizations appear with their checkbooks open.

  I ended up finding a place to stay in New Orleans and commuted in to the areas each day, which cut my driving time down to about 5 hours round trip, which was still a lot especially since I had to wake up at thee in the morning on several days in order to make it to the coast by first light.  That being said it was still quite pleasant compared to situations I have found myself in photographing other disasters around the world.

  The beginning of the two week project was spent in Venice.  I thought would check out the coastline and speak to some fishermen and gather some direction from those experiences. However when I arrived I found the situation much different than what I had pictured.  The fishermen all seemed to be quite content, for the most part.  

   Apparently BP had made a very smart decision and offered work, at a relatively high rate of pay, to all of the fishermen.  Shrimping boats were being used to place oil boom, cutters were used as skimming boats and charter boats were involved in all sorts of different operations from surveying the damaged areas to cleanup and animal rescue. As far as the coastline goes, since there is a lot of marshland and very few actual beaches, there was not a lot of oil in plain sight...or as I found out later on, it just took a bit more effort to find it.  There is, of course, plenty of oil out there.

  The US Coast Guard had set up an incident command center and was working with the media to get the story out.  I hooked up with them towards the end of my first day working on the story and spent the next two weeks with them, as well as the Department of Fish and Wildlife.  They kindly offered their boats, airplanes and expertise to me in order to help get the story out.  It was actually shocking to me to see how much effort they were putting into media operations.  After speaking with several people from the different departments I realized that not only did they expect to bill BP for all of these services, it also seemed to be the perfect time to train their staff members in a real world operations.  I also feel like the US government probably will benefit from the word of the severity of this spill reaching the general public.  Who knows how many millions in tax dollars could come from the oil industry with new regulations put into place after this spill, and of course it does really make sense.  If this whole situation proved anything it was that you cant expect a corporation to play it safe, especially when playing it safe involves spending money out of their own pockets.

  In order to get the images I needed to tell this story, every day I would wake up early and drive to either the Venice or the Grand Isle area.  Usually at that point I would meed up with my connections at the Coast Guard or the Department of Fish and WIldlife and hop on one of their boats and begin the two hour trip out to the oil affected waters and marshlands.  Most days it felt as though we were chasing the oil.  I wanted pictures of it, the scientists on the boats wanted samples of it and the wildlife folks wanted to document its effects on animals and of course rescue and rehabilitate if possible.  Sometimes we went out on planes to fly over the spill site, other times blimps and helicopters would relay information and GPS coordinates to us while we were out on the boats.

  However, the interesting thing about this situation was that no one, no matter how smart they were or how specialized their skills were, had any idea what to expect, on a day to day basis or long term.  We never knew if we would see oil or affected wildlife or not. No one seemed to know where the oil was heading.  People had theories about the oil sinking or remaining under the surface. Others thought it had just gotten pushed towards other areas.  Some thought the dispersants had done something odd to the oil. Basically this was a first of its kind event.  Oil, in an unknown state (chemically) had come from very deep under the sea and been dumped into the water without any treatment or processing.  Then it was mixed with chemicals which effects are not really understood, even on oil in other forms (such as refined/processed,) not to mention this new, raw form.  Then add into it shifting tides, storms, long durations mixed with the salt water, temptation, duration in water etc.  Add it all together and you have a gigantic mystery, one in which around eighty million gallons of oil just go missing.

  The effects on wildlife after the spill are also difficult to understand.  The research on animal survival rates after oil spills have lots of variables, so many that you ask one person and they will tell you most animals affected by oil will die and you ask another and they say most will live.  Add to it all the new variables involved in this particular spill and no one really has any idea what will happen.  But of course efforts must be made to help as many animals as possible.

  Fishermen dont know how long the money from BP will keep flowing in and once it is gone they have no idea if they will be able to return to their old way of life, which for many is the only way of life they know.  For all they know they could end up on the streets.  The uncertainty about income, completely new hours and schedules and fear of what may happen in the future has led many local families to give up their pets to shelters in fear of not being able to properly care for them.  The charter fishing business is gone, or at least on hold indefinitely, so the tourism economy in these communities has also been destroyed.   More than eighty percent of those living in these areas make their living from the fishing industry, either directly or indirectly.   

  So, like most of the people involved in this spill, I came away from it not really knowing what I learned from it.  Yes, I did see horrible things.  I saw massive amounts of oil in all kinds of strange forms in all kind of different places where it did not belong.  I saw oiled birds and fish, dead birds and fish and dying marshlands.  I saw beaches with oily shores and oil in the water as dolphins swam through, seemingly unaware.  I saw animal shelters overflowing with dogs and cats whose owners could not afford to keep them, bird rehabilitation shelters with workers diligently cleaning animals and fishermen with unknown fates.  There are all kinds of effects from this spill that can be seen right now, but to me, and most others involved in its cleanup, the scariest aspect is the future and all of the unknowns.

A worker from the Department of Fish and Wildlife places a toe tag on a bird found dead in marshlands near Grand Isle, Louisiana.

 

Oil and other material washing ashore on an island of marshlands near Venice, Louisiana.

 

A former shrimping vessel spreads oil boom in hopes of soaking up a new wave of oil washing ashore after a tropical storm.

 

A cleanup worker holds out a glob of toxic oil found on a beach.

 

A display in the yard of a local household in Grand Isle shows crosses with the names of all of the things locals feel that they have lost in the wake of the BP Oil spill.

 

Globs of oil and oil sheen float far offshore.

 

A severely malnourished dog searches for food in the sand at a local animal shelter in St. Bernard's Perish.  Animal shelters have been overflowing with animals since the gulf coast oil spill, as many fisherman and their families feel they can no longer care for them.

A resident of Grand Isle carries a bag of donated pet food.  Residents can show various documents that prove their reliance on the fishing industry for income in order to get pet food and supplies donated by local and national charities. 

 

A sign outside of Grand Isle uses the popular, underwater cartoon Sponge Bob Square Pants to poke at BP in the wake of the oil spill.

 

Pelicans coated in oil and wait to be cleaned at an oiled bird rehabilitation center set up after the BP disaster.

A sign on a large metal container reads "Bird Carcass Collection Site" in an oiled bird rehabilitation center.

My thanks to the US Coast Guard, Dept of Fish and Wildlife, Louisiana SPCA and everyone else who made this project possible.  Part 2 will be posted here in the coming weeks.

 

Comments

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Thank you as always for your amazing work!

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Zoriah, horrifying truths! Great work!

The photograph of the old lady with pet-food is really haunting. It says so little, yet conveys so much!

Carry on, my friend!

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